A Life I'll Never Have
by copyrogueleader
Summary: "Why me?" He'd never know. All he knew was that he wanted to be that boy, over there, with the dark hair, and the big eyes, waiting, without a care in the world, for his clothes to dry. He wanted his life. The normal, normal life that Kurt would never have.
1. Chapter 1

**This just sorta came to me earlier today. Originally I was working on a prompt, but I got some writers block, and… this happened. Not sure if I'll continue it. We'll see what happens. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it (: **

A Life I'll Never Have

The gentle hums and vibrations of the tumbling machine behind his back nearly lulled Kurt Hummel to sleep, right there, on the floor, in the middle of the Laundromat.

They probably would have, in fact, had it not been for the three low beeps emitted from his watch when the clock read 7:00 pm.

Right on cue, Kurt reached into his old-fashioned, beige backpack and retrieved a small, bright orange canister. He unscrewed the white lid (scratching up the palm of his hand a little as he did, as the cap was a little faulty), poured two tiny, white tablets into his hand, then closed it back up and dropped it back into his bag. Ruefully he stared down at the tablets in his hand, hating himself for being like this. "It's not your fault… You didn't ask for this… Everyone has obstacles to overcome, and this just happens to be yours…" from his father, his step-mom, his doctor, his brother, over and over again, every day… but it never made things any easier. If anything, it made him more indignant. And he couldn't help but hate himself just a little more every time he asked himself, _Why me? _

_Why me? _

He sighed, heavily, and decided, _Not tonight. No pity parties tonight. _He brought his hand to his mouth and tossed back the tablets, then snatched up the water bottle by his side and washed them down.

They were supposed to make him feel better. But every time he felt those two little white disks tumble over his tongue and down his throat, he felt worse. Sure, they lessened the anxiety attacks. True, they almost completely washed away the tendency he had of contemplating his reasons to live. But, at the moment when he swallowed them, for the time being, they just made everything worse.

Kurt slumped against the dryer, and pulled his book back into his lap. _The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. _Why he had chosen this one, of all the books he had strewn around his tiny apartment, he did not know. Nor did he really care. But when he thought about it, he felt that perhaps he just wanted something to take him back to when things weren't so complicated. With these, he was an 8-year-old lying in bed in his old house, curled up next to his father, who would read to him until he fell asleep, blissfully ignorant of all the torment the future had in store…

He quickly pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind. _No pity parties tonight, _he reminded himself.

He opened the book.

"Snow White." He knew this one well. Though, now that he was older (but still, only at the ripe age of twenty-one), he couldn't understand how he had once been so happy that the dwarves found Snow White before she died at the hands of the Queen and her poisoned lace bodices that he had not stopped to think, "Stupid girl… why would you open the door? The dwarves told you not to…"

And he could not understand how he had once been so overcame with the romance of the young Prince wanting to take Snow White's glass casket so that he could gaze upon her beauty even in death that he had not stopped to consider, "So basically, the Prince is… a necrophiliac…"

And he could not understand how he had once been so happy that the Evil Queen was dead and gone in the end that he had not stopped to imagine, "What a way to die… being forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until you literally no longer have the will to live… if Snow White is so merciful and good, why would she torture the Queen so much? Why not just behead her and get it over with…?"

It was often shocking, even to Kurt, just how much his perspective on everything he saw, heard, and read had changed over the past few years of his life. He tried blaming it on his inactive frontal lobe, his lack of norepinephrine, his shortage of serotonin… but in the end, he could only blame himself. Even though, according to everyone around him, it wasn't his fault.

Hardly processing a word of what he read, Kurt realized he was already two pages into "Snow White." He made a mental mark of where he had left off and let his head rest against the trembling machine behind him, just taking a moment to himself.

The Laundromat was relatively quiet. A few customers here and there, the low rumble of the machines, the static of the radio that seemed on a constant loop of hits from the 1990s, and the little bell that sounded whenever a customer would enter being the only ambience.

He sat, legs folded into a pretzel, on the sea-green linoleum floor in the center of a long row of washers and dryers. He was the only one on his side, but there were two or three people on his opposite. A couple yards down on his left, there was a young girl – couldn't have been older than seventeen – lying flat on her back on the floor, a folded-up hoodie for a pillow, reading a book Kurt did not recognize. Subconsciously, she bobbed her head back and forth in time with whatever song was streaming through her large, sound-cancelling headphones.

A few yards from her there was a man, probably in his late twenties, who popped into the aisle every once in a while to check on his load, then went back to the front of the store and hoisted himself onto the cashier's desk, where the two of them spoke in low, casual, conversational tones. They were probably friends.

Kurt's eyes wandered back to the girl, then several paces down the aisle to his right. Sitting in a pose similar to his own was another young man, this one, Kurt guessed, a little older than himself. He had dark, unruly curls, a hard, defined kind of face, and big, expressive eyes that were scanning across a message of some sort on his iPhone. He smiled slightly at whatever he was reading, then turned his phone sideways to type up a response, slouching down just a little bit against the dryer behind his back, tumbling his load.

Kurt just watched him, sitting there, typing on his phone, completely relaxed, face looking so serenely expressionless… and he wished he were him. He just wanted to be one of those people he passed every day on his way to work, or one of those people in line in front of him at the grocery store, or one of these people, right here, in the Laundromat, like that boy to his right typing on his iPhone, who were just regular people. People who didn't have so much to worry about, so much to regret, so much to fear for the future…

_Why me? _

He'd never know. All he knew was that he wanted to be that boy, over there, with the dark hair, and the big eyes, waiting, without a care in the world, for his clothes to dry. He wanted his life. The normal, _normal _life that Kurt would never have.

* * *

Blaine felt himself beginning to smile when he read the text from his brother, and it was the most unusual feeling.

Because he hadn't smiled in days. _Days. _And it was so unexpected, and his mind and body had become so unaccustomed to the feeling, that it had actually become foreign.

_I love you, bud. I'll always love you, even if they don't. I know it feels like you don't have anything right now, or anyone, but that's not true. I'm here, okay?_

He wanted to cry. He could feel his stomach tightening and tears threatening to fall, but he refused to let them. He had cried far too much in the past few days, weeks… he had to stop. So he focused hard on the smile that had somehow formed on his lips, despite everything that had happened to him, despite feeling so lost and useless and completely _alone_. He felt it, felt the way his muscles tightened and wouldn't let it fade, and he just kept smiling until he felt his face fall back, not into sadness, but into a relaxed kind of state, with no expression at all.

He flipped his phone sideways and replied.

_Coop… you have no idea what that means to me. I love you, too. I'll call you tonight._

He sighed heavily, then slid his phone into his old, worn messenger bag, and pulled out his book and a thermos of hot chicken broth (to help with the searing sore throat he'd had for the past week and a half, partially due to illness, partially due to yelling).

He stretched his legs out in front of him and laid his book (_Girl, Interrupted, _which he'd already read twice) open on his lap, reading leisurely past his bookmark as he unscrewed his thermos, brought the brim to his lips, and took a few sips, allowing the steaming liquid to soothe his aching throat. It also, however, made him aware once again of how torn and shredded and overexerted his voice and throat were at the moment, which brought back painful memories of the night before, as well as each preceding night, for at least the past week and a half.

Why his parents cared so much about what he did with his own life, he would never know. No matter what career path he chose, they would remain virtually unaffected by his decision. Unless, of course, it was about pride, about bragging rights, which he wouldn't put past them. He knew them better than they gave him credit for, and he knew that they were the kind of people who wanted to be able to say that the next Anderson was pursuing a career as a surgeon, a legislator, an attorney, or better yet, following his brother into the family business.

He really never thought it would be so hard to just say, "No." Deep down, he knew the day would come when he had to, and he knew his parents wouldn't have found it ideal, but he always figured they would just accept it and move along.

But no. Of course, there had to be ramifications. There had to be consequences, speeches, lectures, admonishments, there had to be drama, there had to be shame, there had to be that fucking lack of basic logic that his parents had been pulling on him since the day he could talk, that "because we said so" routine that was just so unbelievably immature and _used _that Blaine wanted to pull out all of his hair in frustration.

Every time the soup seared his throat, he felt as though he were screaming once again, as if heightening the volume would get the message through the brick wall that there had always been and would always be between himself and his father.

He set the thermos next to his bag and sighed, still, refusing to cry. He glanced down at the pages of his book, and tried to move forward, but found eventually that he just couldn't. Not tonight.

So, he set it aside as well. And he sat, staring down at his hands in his lap, just thinking about how badly he wanted all of this, everything, to just go away. He wanted to be one of those people whose parents actually cared about their happiness. He knew people like that. He had friends like that. Friends whose parents didn't disown them for following their own paths, pursuing their own ambitions. Parents that weren't _his_.

He wanted to be one of those people who just sailed through life because everything was simple. He wanted to be in someone else's body, in someone else's head, and feel _their _emotions. Not his. He was tired of his. He was _exhausted _and didn't want to have to deal with it anymore, but it just hurt so much knowing that no matter how badly he wanted it or how hard he wished for it, he would never get someone else's life. Anyone else's life. Anyone but himself.

While there had been chaos in his head, Blaine realized he had hardly moved an inch. He was just staring, staring straight ahead at the empty washer and dryer in front of him, face probably expressionless, eyes a little tired, if anything.

And when all the drama in his mind finally faded away, he let his eyes wander, almost in slow motion, down the aisle, until…

_Him, _he thought. _Why can't I just be him?_

Him, the pale-skinned boy with light brown, wispy hair who was sitting a little way away from Blaine, on the opposite side of the aisle, his face as peaceful as Blaine had ever seen anyone's as he read…

_The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, _Blaine could just make out in small, silver lettering on the back of the aged copy.

_Him. _Who was probably reading old fairytales, just for the nostalgia. Because he enjoyed them. He who was free to do what made him happy because his parents let him, because that's what his parents _wanted _for him. He who probably didn't have a worry in the world, who was calm, and collected, and without that sickening feeling in his stomach that bubbled higher and higher every time a new obstacle threw itself in his way.

_But that will never be me. That's _his_ life. That's a life I'll never have. _

**Again, not sure if I'll continue this as a two or three part piece, but we'll see what happens. Let me know if you have an opinion either way (: **


	2. Chapter 2

A Life I'll Never Have – Part II

Kurt couldn't read. Well, he could, and he was, but he _couldn't. _He couldn't process the words, couldn't appreciate them, couldn't use them as a way to forget about all the problems currently on his mind because those were far too heavy. They were making his head hurt.

He shut the book and slumped back against the rumbling machine.

In a fit of frustration with the story, himself, everything, he stuffed the book violently back into his bag, and the canister of pills came tumbling back out onto the floor.

Seeing that little orange container made his stomach sick. Seeing those little white tablets inside made him feel as though he could feel the two he had just taken still rolling around inside him, not helping, just making everything worse. Just drawing his attention back to the fact that he was a defective human being who needed medication in order to do to what the rest of the world had absolutely no problem doing, a pathetic little boy who couldn't even live his life because his body was so… _messed up… _

As if he was suddenly transported back into his own body after having drifted away, Kurt was suddenly hyperaware of how panic-stricken his body had become. His elbows were on his knees and his hands were tangled into his hair, gripping it so hard he could feel individual roots pulling up painfully on the skin of his scalp. He was breathing hard and deep and too quick to be doing himself any good, and his eyes were so full of tears ready to fall at any instant that he could barely even make out the pattern on the linoleum floor beneath his shoes…

_I can't… I can't, I can't, I can't… someone… someone, please… I can't, I can't do this… just… help me… _

"I said, _are you okay?_"

Kurt started, and suddenly realized that there was a hand on his shoulder, and a man kneeling by his side. It was the young, dark-haired man from just across the way.

Instinctively Kurt backed away a little, and the young man held up his hands in innocence.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I… I didn't mean to scare you."

Kurt brought his hands out of his hair and glanced up and down the aisle. The girl lying on her back had propped herself up and pulled one headphone away from her ear, and she was watching Kurt, concerned. The man who knew the cashier was peering back into the aisle, looking equally as concerned.

"You… you were… hyperventilating," said the dark-haired boy, still kneeling (at a safe distance) by Kurt.

Kurt, still breathing heavily, looked up into the boy's dark eyes.

He tried to speak, but he found it so hard to form proper words before a boy who wasn't _real. _Or at least, hadn't been real a few minutes ago. A few minutes ago, this boy might as well have been a figment of Kurt's imagination; the boy with the perfect life, the boy Kurt would spend the rest of the night wishing he could be. There are people you know, and then, there are people you watch from a distance, and wonder about. The two don't coincide. Or, at least, they hadn't, until then.

"Are you… going to be okay?"

Kurt's gaze hadn't left the boy's, not once.

"Um… yes. Yes. I'll be fine," he sniffled. "I'm fine. I was just…"

Kurt's gaze dropped to the floor and he caught sight of the orange canister, the one he hated with every ounce of feeling he had inside of himself. He smacked it away.

"Whoa, whoa…" it rolled over to the boy's knee, and he picked it up. "It's okay," he said. "You're fine… everything's fine…"

"No," Kurt murmured, shaking his head, "no, no… it's… it's not…"

"Hey…" cautiously, as if approaching a wounded animal, the boy reached forward and once again placed a hand on Kurt's shoulder, "Just… just breathe, okay?"

Without meeting the boy's eyes, Kurt obeyed. He sat for a few moments and caught his breath, and out of the corner of his eye he caught the girl and the man who knew the cashier going back to their business, _Probably thoroughly assured that the other guy can take care of the crazy one… _he thought, bitterly, as his breathing evened out.

"Are these yours?" the boy asked, after a while.

Kurt glanced toward the canister of small white tablets and gave a quiet, dry, bitter laugh and a nod of the head. "Yeah," he muttered, taking it from the boy's hands, then fiddling with it in his lap while he wiped his eyes dry on the back of his hand.

Through his peripheral vision, Kurt saw the boy nod in the direction of their onlookers, who then appeared to go back to what they were doing. Ideally they wouldn't have noticed at all, but Kurt was at least grateful he no longer had an audience.

Kurt kept his head down, and he continued to effortlessly twist the child safety lock to no avail.

He wasn't sure what he expected to happen. Part of him wanted the boy with the perfect life to walk away so that he could continue to envy him from afar. There was another part of him, though, that – whether or not he would admit it to himself – wanted him, so badly… to just…

"Do you want to talk about it?"

* * *

The look on the pale boy's face made Blaine's stomach twist painfully. He looked so miserable and hopeless, but at the same time he looked so stunned at what Blaine had just asked him. Blaine's stomach gave another painful lurch for the boy when the thought occurred to him that _Maybe that isn't something people say to him often. _

"Only if you… want to," he added, lamely.

"You don't even know me."

Blaine froze. Not so much at the boy's words, but at the look in his eyes when he turned to face him. The momentary look of surprise had faded as quickly as it had appeared, and his gaze had became harsh, sharp, icy blue, and almost judgmental.

And this was exactly what Blaine had been afraid of. The sense of urgency he felt coming over to the boy had muddled the feeling slightly, but Blaine was still aware of it; the feeling that he was crossing some boundary that ought not to be crossed. When you create a life and a story for a stranger in your head – which is exactly what Blaine had been doing for the pale boy reading the fairytales – you eventually become so convinced of its truth that actually speaking to or meeting that person will set something off-balance in the universe. Blaine could almost feel this happening, as the boy glared at him skeptically with those cold blue eyes.

"I know I don't," Blaine said, quickly, "but… I'd like to help. Or at least try, if… if you want me to…"

Seeing the boy with the perfect life morph from completely peaceful to completely panic-stricken all in a matter of seconds is what made Blaine do it, made Blaine offer his help. Seeing the boy's face crumble as it did sent something through Blaine's body, like an electric shock physically reprimanding him for being so naïve, making so many unfair assumptions. He felt guilty, and in a strange way, he felt obligated to make amends.

The boy hesitated, but after looking Blaine up and down and one last long, unyielding look into his eyes, his expression softened. Then, quietly, he asked, "What's your name?"

Blaine knew the very second he opened his mouth to answer that the boundary was about to be crossed.

"Blaine," he said. "My name is Blaine."

For the first time since Blaine had set eyes on him, the boy smiled. Small, but still a smile.

"Kurt."

Blaine took that as his cue to sit a little more comfortably on the floor by Kurt's side.

Kurt took a long, deep sigh, then said quietly, "I'm depressed."

Blaine laughed a little. "I know what you mean."

"No," Kurt said, shaking his head and turning to look Blaine in the eye again, his face serious, "I'm… depressed. Clinically… clinically depressed."

Blaine wanted to slap himself in the head, he had been so stupid, acting like he knew, like he understood. Instantly, he felt awful about what he had said.

"Kurt, I'm so-"

"Don't," Kurt interrupted, shaking his head. He offered Blaine a sad kind of smile. "Don't apologize," he said. "I've never been the 'You have no idea what I'm going through so don't act like you do' type. That's always seemed kind of… naïve to me. I mean, I presume a lot, about… other people, people I don't even know," he said, and Blaine nodded, knowing exactly what he meant, "But it seems wrong to act like other people's problems aren't… you know… problems, just as well."

Blaine nodded again. He gestured toward the pills in Kurt's hands, and asked, gently, "They helping?"

Kurt huffed out a humorless laugh. "Not really."

"When did it… when did it all start?"

"When my mom died," he said with a sniffle. "I was eight. Everything's kind of just gone… downhill, since then. And I…" there was something in Kurt's eyes and in the now steady stream of words that comforted Blaine, told him that Kurt had decided to throw away inhibitions and just let everything out… "I kept thinking, 'This time I've hit bottom,' 'It can't get worse than this,' 'I have to go up from here,' but it just… life always found a way to get worse, and, and keeps finding ways to get worse. A different diagnosis, a new medication, _additional_ medication, a new side effect, panic attacks, and I… God…" He ran a hand over his exasperated expression, massaging his eyelids, pinching his forehead… "I would literally give _anything _to just… be a kid again. Before… before all of this happened, before… my mom died."

Kurt's eyes were on his lap again, and Blaine could only stare at him – the pale boy reading the fairy tales – in pain, sympathy, and disbelief. He felt as though he'd been kicked in the head or slapped across the face, somehow awakened from his own little universe in which everything revolved around _him_ and _his problems; _pulled out of his own self-obsessed mind and hit with the reality that _I'm not the center of the fucking universe. _

While Blaine was busy cursing himself for being so selfish, Kurt interrupted his thoughts when he muttered, "And now I'm dumping all my problems on a perfect stranger…"

He made a move – to get up, to express an apology, something of the sort – but Blaine stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"No, no, I…" he pulled his hand back when Kurt returned to his seat on the floor, eyeing Blaine curiously, "It's fine, Kurt. It's… I'm just… that's awful, Kurt. That's really, really awful."

Kurt leaned back against the rumbling machine again, but turned his head to face Blaine. His icy blue eyes pierced Blaine's, like he was searching for something inside them, until suddenly, his expression changed. Like he had found what he was looking for. It wasn't a happy expression, exactly, but it was soft, cognizant, and appreciative.

"It, um…" he nodded, just slightly, "it sucks."

Blaine laughed before he could stop himself, but then, Kurt began to laugh as well.

"I'll bet," Blaine smiled after a moment of shared laughter, his sympathy for this boy outweighing his pity for himself and his own situation by the passing minutes.

"This is so… weird," Kurt said, shaking his head.

Blaine watched him, curiously. "What do you mean?"

Kurt turned to look at him again, and he looked like there was something he wanted to say very much, but was holding back because it was silly, unusual, something he might be judged for…

Suddenly, Blaine had a frighteningly promising idea of what it could be.

"What do you mean, Kurt?" he pressed on. "What's weird?"

Kurt wrapped his arms around himself, a little shyly, then finally laughed to himself, looked Blaine in the eye, and said, "You weren't… you weren't _real _to me, a few minutes ago. You were just another… another object of my weekly Laundromat people-watching session… and now… I'm telling you all these things that I never talk about, and… and I was just making up a story for you in my head, like you were some sort of figment of my imagination, and now it's like… God, I can't believe I'm actually saying all of this…" he laughed, embarrassedly, and let his face fall into the palm of his hand.

Blaine could feel a smile of disbelief spreading across his lips, and before Kurt could say another word, Blaine _had _to tell him, "I was watching you too."

Even though they weren't touching, Blaine could somehow feel Kurt stiffen at his words. At first, it frightened him, almost made him regret saying anything, but then Kurt looked up at him, eyes practically glowing in disbelief.

"Really?" he asked.

Blaine nodded. "Really."

Kurt coughed out a small laugh, then looked confusedly from side to side before asking, incredulously, "Why? What were you… what were you… thinking about?"

Blaine ran his hands through his unruly curls, then looked at Kurt, still a little in shock that yes, he and the pale boy reading the fairytales were actually having this conversation.

"I was thinking that I wanted to be you," he said. "You were… kinda like what you said to me earlier," he explained, "about me being just an, an 'object of your people watching.' But I was… jealous of you. I guess I'm… just that selfish. So selfish that I actually thought I could pick any random person in this place and that their problems would pale in comparison to mine, which is so, _so _wrong on _so_ many levels…"

"Oh my… stop it. I was doing the exact same thing," Kurt smiled, forgivingly.

"Yeah, but you had good reason," Blaine laughed, in spite of himself. "Better reason than me, that's for sure."

Blaine watched, thoroughly embarrassed of himself, as Kurt smirked a little, then said, "I think… I can be the judge of that."

Blaine raised his eyebrows in question, and Kurt continued, kindly, "You just carried me down off the edge of a nervous breakdown, let me cry it out, then listened while I told you – quite melodramatically, I might add – my entire life story. I think the least I can do is be a venting buddy for _you._"

Positively grinning ear to ear, Blaine nodded, "It does have a ring of fairness to it, I'll give you that…"

Kurt nodded, returning the smile, and gesturing for Blaine to tell him…

"Anything," Kurt said. "Anything you… anything you need to say. Tell me anything."

Blaine breathed a heavy sigh and let himself slump against the machine, where he sat, shoulder to shoulder with Kurt, and did just that.

And when the clothes were dry, and the fees were paid, and the Laundromat was closed and Kurt and Blaine had parted ways, one thought still connected them, and always would:

_They're really not all that different; my life, and the life I'll never have. _


End file.
